2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Tonitrus]

Voters being responsible for whom they elect and Harris running a poor campaign can both be true at the same time.

[Valmy]

Voters being responsible for whom they elect and Harris running a poor campaign can both be true at the same time.

It can be. I don't think she has run a poor campaign though.

[DGuller]

I think Harris is not a strong candidate (although somewhat stronger than I expected her to be).  Joe Biden deserves a lot of blame for both running again, as well as for having non-negotiable requirements as to what private parts his VP should have in 2020.

That said, how can you run against someone with charisma of a death cult leader?  Especially one who is enabled by various cynical actors, both internal and external?  I think Trump is a generational stroke of bad luck for the whole world, like the black plague.  I fear that just like with black plague, we're just going to have to rough it out and hope we see the other side of it as intact as possible.

[Oexmelin]

"It's always the voter's fault" seems a pretty anemic vision of democracy, and its myriads of forces at play in politics, and in political culture. It's also pretty nihilistic or fatalistic, or a somewhat oblique ways to blame "voters" from which one excludes oneself. Is FoxNews the voters' fault? Is the structure of the media the voters' fault? Are the Koch brothers' the voters' fault? The US Supreme Court? Gerrymandering? The state of the political discourse? The sense of disenfranchisement?

The voters will never exist in some sort of platonic vacuum where pure ideas or ideal-typical political regimes will be carefully weighed and examined. To cast blanket blame on the voters is to abdicate any responsibility for our political world.

[Valmy]

"It's always the voter's fault" seems a pretty anemic vision of democracy, and its myriads of forces at play in politics, and in political culture. It's also pretty nihilistic or fatalistic, or a somewhat oblique ways to blame "voters" from which one excludes oneself. Is FoxNews the voters' fault? Is the structure of the media the voters' fault? Are the Koch brothers' the voters' fault? The US Supreme Court? Gerrymandering? The state of the political discourse? The sense of disenfranchisement?

The voters will never exist in some sort of platonic vacuum where pure ideas or ideal-typical political regimes will be carefully weighed and examined. To cast blanket blame on the voters is to abdicate any responsibility for our political world.

Well fuck I went from having the voters always be right to now I have to argue against the notion the voters are never right.

I mean I don't know what to tell you. The voters choose Trump because they agree with him and his views so if he wins, ultimately that was their choice. I am not sure why it needs to be something other than that. It is not like he is some kind of mysterious quantity that fooled anyone. Everybody knows exactly who he is and an amount large enough to win seems to want that.

So why is that somebody elses' fault than the people making that choice?

[Admiral Yi]

"It's always the voter's fault" seems a pretty anemic vision of democracy, and its myriads of forces at play in politics, and in political culture. It's also pretty nihilistic or fatalistic, or a somewhat oblique ways to blame "voters" from which one excludes oneself. Is FoxNews the voters' fault? Is the structure of the media the voters' fault? Are the Koch brothers' the voters' fault? The US Supreme Court? Gerrymandering? The state of the political discourse? The sense of disenfranchisement?

The voters will never exist in some sort of platonic vacuum where pure ideas or ideal-typical political regimes will be carefully weighed and examined. To cast blanket blame on the voters is to abdicate any responsibility for our political world.

I don't blame myself because I don't believe I'm one of those making the wrong choice.  Nothing fatalistic or nihilistic about that.  We are discussing how to get those voters to make a better choice.  A fatalist or nihilist would be indifferent.

A subset of voters are definitely responsible for Fox News.  A subset of voters are definitely responsible for the Supreme Court and gerrymandering.

[grumbler]

"It's always the voter's fault" seems a pretty anemic vision of democracy, and its myriads of forces at play in politics, and in political culture. It's also pretty nihilistic or fatalistic, or a somewhat oblique ways to blame "voters" from which one excludes oneself. Is FoxNews the voters' fault? Is the structure of the media the voters' fault? Are the Koch brothers' the voters' fault? The US Supreme Court? Gerrymandering? The state of the political discourse? The sense of disenfranchisement?

The answers to your questions are : yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

The voters will never exist in some sort of platonic vacuum where pure ideas or ideal-typical political regimes will be carefully weighed and examined. To cast blanket blame on the voters is to abdicate any responsibility for our political world.

The political world is created the way it is because it is the world the voters respond to.  The Koch brothers would have no power if voters didn't respond positively to their messages and schemes.  Nothing anywhere exists in a platonic ideal, so appeals to its absence are meaningless.

[crazy canuck]

"It's always the voter's fault" seems a pretty anemic vision of democracy, and its myriads of forces at play in politics, and in political culture. It's also pretty nihilistic or fatalistic, or a somewhat oblique ways to blame "voters" from which one excludes oneself. Is FoxNews the voters' fault? Is the structure of the media the voters' fault? Are the Koch brothers' the voters' fault? The US Supreme Court? Gerrymandering? The state of the political discourse? The sense of disenfranchisement?

The voters will never exist in some sort of platonic vacuum where pure ideas or ideal-typical political regimes will be carefully weighed and examined. To cast blanket blame on the voters is to abdicate any responsibility for our political world.

I think you are misinterpreting what the word fault means in that sentence.

It is of course, the voters' fault. It is only the voters who vote.  Claiming that it is some force other than voters that selects who gets elected is problematic to say the least.

[Legbiter]

In a democracy people get the government they deserve.  Putting the onus on the candidate and their circus masters to put on the right entertainment is BS.  If voters in a democracy lack agency to point where they can't make rational decisions and think for themselves unless candidate X runs the right digital ad packages, then we might as well pack it up and accept our new dictator.

[Valmy]

I mean he is not wrong 

Of course the problem is the oligarchs, the monarchs, and the dictators generally do worse.

[The Brain]

Obviously voters are responsible for how they vote. Trying to delegitimize democracy by claiming otherwise seems destructive to me.

[Tamas]

Obviously voters are responsible for how they vote. Trying to delegitimize democracy by claiming otherwise seems destructive to me.

Indeed. Plus condescending. I hold all citizens to the same standards I hold myself to, because I don't consider them sub-par to myself. Well, some of them I do, but the principle stays.

[Josquius]

"Blame"/"fault" are such annoying terms. Rarely does anything have a single cause and too often when people speak about blame they do mean single and only factor with all others completely absolved.

Obviously voters are responsible for how they vote. They ultimately were the ones that crossed the box.
But even in a theoretical of a literal gun to the head, put your mark here or else, this still holds true. Where is the line drawn here?

As in most society-wide things I'm reluctant to put too much of the onus on the individuals and rather the factors that led to this mass-delusion.
Its a failure of the education system, a failure of conventional politicians to provide for these people (which isn't to say Trump will in anyway actually do that, but he does provide an outlet for flipping the table and hope its eventually set back up differently), and a failure (/success) of the social media companies for setting up this direct access to tap into people's system 1 thinking that any dodgy actor in all the world is freely able to use.

[frunk]

Voters are responsible for how they vote.  However others are responsible for:

• Discouraging participation either by intimidation or persuasion
• Corrupting institutions so that people's votes matter less or not at all
• Not accepting the results of elections and attempting insurrections/coups
• Preventing insurrectionist organizers from facing consequences
• Spreading propaganda that slanders legitimate office holders in favor of those attempting to weaken or destroy democracy

[Josephus]

Voters being responsible for whom they elect and Harris running a poor campaign can both be true at the same time.

It can be. I don't think she has run a poor campaign though.

Oh, yes she has and I don't even think it's debatable.